Here’s a message for the faithful.
What is it that you cherish?
To find the Way to see your nature?
Your nature is naturally so.
What Heaven bestows is perfect.
Looking for proof leads you astray
Leaving the trunk to search among the twigs
All you get is stupid.

Hanshan (Cold Mountain)

I slept for about an hour and woke up hot and sweaty. Checked my phone and saw it was 6:10 pm. Time to get something to eat. I made the short walk across the stream and up to the porch which was filled with bikers rocking, smoking, drinking and talking on their cell phones. I found Skunk.

“Ready to eat?”

“Yep.” We walked into the restaurant, checked the menu that was scribbled in various colors onto the whiteboard and hemmed and hawed a bit. Finally, we gave our order to the waitress, some cute young high school girl wearing an expression of innocence, confidence and tender forbearance toward old men and their foibles.

“It’ll be about ten minutes sweetie pie.” She said. “What’s the name?”

“Monk.” She wrote it down.

We found a couple of seats back on the porch and reminisced how the place had changed over the years.

“Remember that tiered garden they used to have over there? The flowers were beautiful.”

I shook my head. “Can’t really recall that but I do remember that inside they had those stuffed animals on the wall and motorcycle shirts hanging from the ceiling.”

He nodded and we rocked and overheard bits of chatter from the other bikers.

One guy was pointing to his BMW: “It’s got dual plugs. When you roll on it there’s no hesitation.”

Two other men were speaking. One was scratching the back of his head and said: “He has to pull the choke and give it half throttle just to get the damn thing started.”

The other replied: “Needs to adjust the carburetor. It’s not a big job. By doing what he’s doing he’s advancing the timing. Could hurt the engine.”

Other snippets of conversation drifted to my ears

“Almost rolled into a bear up at Woody Gap. Just past the overlook, over the guardrail.”

“I like that road over Fort Mountain. Tight going up and sweepers going down.”

“Watch out for that blind hill. There are three curves you can’t see on. It’s tight but safe.”

Men were bent over, tipping this way and that with their phones, trying to check for satellite images of the weather. In the distance, I heard the clunk of a Harley going into first gear, turned and watched a guy ride off and then my eyes followed a couple in full leathers as they started climbing the stairs.

At the top, the man pats the woman on the back, shakes his head and says: “Honey, you need to learn how to pee out in the woods.”

“I just can’t do it.” She replies. “But you know what, when I was little and rode with my grandpaw he wouldn’t stop the car and so I had to pee into a Styrofoam cup in the back seat.”

“So you can pee into a Styrofoam cup but not out in the woods?” He replied. “Tell you what how about next time you go in the woods I’ll give you a Styrofoam cup to use!”

She gave him a little slug on the arm, they laughed and wandered past us into the diner.

“Monk!” Yelled a woman carrying a tray of food.

I raised my hand and signaled toward a picnic bench. We followed her over to the table and sat down.

“So Monk where are you heading to?”

“Out to California, to see my daughter Hannah.”

“I remember her. Cute as a button. You gonna take Interstate 40?

“No, I’m keeping to the back roads.”

He shook his head. “I understand that but you know that’ll double your time to the coast?”

“That’s okay. I’m retired now. I’m in no hurry. Might even head up to Sturgis.”

He rubbed his forehead and squinted. “Monk, not many people would go to California by way of Sturgis, South Dakota. You sure you’re all right to be riding?”

“I’m fine Skunk, thanks for asking.”

He glanced in the direction of my bike. “You got a GPS on that thing?”

“Nope, but I’ve got my Harley atlas.”

He glanced back at the bike again, leaning his head to the left and right. “I see you ain’t got no tank bag either to put a map in so you could look at it whilst you was riding.”

“Always thought those tank bags got in the way. Also, they spoil the look of Big Red.” I smiled.

He turned his head slightly sideways and stared at me. “Monk that’s a hellavu lot of blue highways to California for you to be a negotiating without a GPS or a map in a tank bag.”

“I’ll be all right. It’s a big state. Even I can’t miss it.” I laughed.

“Ha! What road you thinking of taking next?”

“Not sure. I’m open for suggestions.”

“I’ll tell you now that Highway 61 – they call it the Great Mississippi River Road- is a nice ride. Levee’s high in most places but you can catch glimpses of the old river. Road runs all the way from Louisiana to Wisconsin. Purt near 3000 miles. You could pick it up anywhere, maybe over at Memphis.”

“Sounds good to me,” I said as I forked some coleslaw into my mouth.

We finished eating and as the sun drifted down we just sat on the porch rocking and talking with other bikers. Biking is a fellowship and everyone coming up the stairs felt undefensive, eager to say hello, shoot the bull and talk bikes and trips.

We sat there until it was bordering on dusk and a veil of coolness had descended upon the mountains and trees. The dinner bell rang last call for supper. I said goodnight to Skunk and wandered across the road to the waterfall. The reflection of the moon was flickering in the water. I heard a hoarse, cawing sound, looked up and spotted a murder of crows in the twilight. Though my short-term memory was pretty shot I somehow remembered an old Chinese poem from the time my buddy Joe and I were in China, wandering around in the mountains hiding from the law.

While I watch the moon go down, a crow caws through the frost;
Under the shadows of maple-trees a fisherman moves with his torch;
And I hear, from beyond Su-chou, from the temple on Cold Mountain,
Ringing for me, here in my boat, the midnight bell.

Well, at least some of my long-term memory was still intact. I walked back across the road, across the bridge, over the stream and headed for my tent. About 50 yards ahead of me there was a gathering of folks near a blazing fire ring. I unzipped the outer cover of the tent and then heard a voice.

“Hey, mister. Come on and join us”. It came from the fire ring. I couldn’t see who had said it but I saw faces smiling and a bottle being lifted in the flickering light.

“Sure”, I replied and ambled over.

There were seven other bikers, including a married couple around the fire ring. We introduced ourselves, said where we were from and where we were heading. Jokes and stories were told, favorite routes and campgrounds were shared and then one of the bikers, a veteran, launched into the soul-wrenching song: “I’m still in Saigon”.

All the sounds of long ago

Will be forever in my head

Mingled with the wounded cries

And the silence of the dead.

We were in awed silence as he finished, thinking of his war, our own little wars, the lost and still missing from our lives. Someone passed around a bottle of fireball whiskey and the jokes began flowing again.

I felt happy as I stumbled back to the tent, guided only by the moonlight, the whiskey and my old Duck Dynasty flashlight. I climbed inside and got my stuff out so I could go and brush my teeth. Then I remembered: I’d forgotten to phone Colin. I fished out from my bag the structure sheets I had prepared for my phone calls. I had written down the questions and left space for my answers. I took out my pencil and jotted down the answers.

“Where are you?”Answer and say something specific about the place.

Suches, Two wheels campground. You remember that place. Ran into old Skunk and we had a good chat. Place has changed a lot. Flowerbeds are gone and so are the dead animals on the wall. Came up here once with Clare on the old BMW.

“How’s the ride been?”

Give the same answer always. Good, no problems. Bike’s holding up well.

“Where are you going to next?”

Not sure. Have to consult my map. Thinking about Highway 61, the great Mississippi River road.

“Feeling okay? How’s the memory?”

What? I forgot about my memory. Just joking. It’s good. I remembered all of a Chinese poem from when your uncle Joe and I were dressed as Buddhist monks in China, hiding out from the police.

The call went amazingly well. I was thrown off by a few questions I hadn’t anticipated but I think I pulled it off. One was: “Dad, I know you have my number tattooed on your arm but do you even remember your own phone number?”

“Of course I do”, I checked my other arm where I had tattooed the number and “me” above it and casually read it out. “017 4517”

I finished up by asking about his work and about Siobhan and Stephen.

“Everything okay Colly?”

“Yep, yep, yep.”

“I love and miss you son.”

“Me too dad.”

Chapter 8

Day 3 – Suches, Georgia

The world about us is full of ghostly doings. Every moment of our lives is trying to tell us something, but we do not care to listen to this spirit voice. When we are alone and still we’re afraid that something will be whispered in our ears, and so we hate the stillness and anesthetize ourselves through sociability.

Nietzsche

The morning was fresh and crispy when I woke up. My neck and back were stiff but just needed a little stretching and would be all right. I unzipped the tent entrance and climbed out. There was the stream I had listened to all night. Mist was rising from the water and from the hillocks in the distance. The trees smelled new, fresh. Across the bridge, folks were already gathering on the deck, some smoking, some consulting maps. I wandered over to the bathroom and then came back to the tent. I leaned on Big Red and took in the beauty of the place.

I remembered another Chinese poem.

In spring hundreds of flowers,

In summer, refreshing breeze.

In autumn, harvest moon,

In winter, snowflakes accompany you.

Every season is a good season.

If useless things do not linger in your mind.

A memory of my first wife Maeve brushed through my mind and I felt a flutter of longing in my gut. We were standing outside Dunluce Castle… Monk! I said to myself. Let go of the past. Stay in the present. I moved to an open area and started doing my Tai Chi movements. After about ten minutes I heard Skunk’s voice.

“You still doing them Chinese exercises?”

“It’s Tai Chi. It’s an exercise and a martial art.”

“Ha. Martial art. You move too damn slow to fight somebody. What are you going to do, bore your opponent to death?”

I laughed and kept going through the movements: balance, breathing, empty the mind, come to the senses. “Each move has a meaning behind it for defense and health.”

“What’s that move there called?”

“Embrace tiger, return to mountain.”

“What’s that about?”

I kept slowly going through my moves while explaining. “Embracing the tiger is embracing your fear or any difficult situation you’re facing, and return to the mountain means feeling your strength, feeling grounded.”

Skunk watched, tilted his head left and right and then shook it. “I gotta head out Monk.”

I stopped, walked over to him and gave him a long hug. “See you down the road Skunk.”

“Keep the shiny side up Monk.”

I watched as he walked away.

I packed up my gear and loaded it onto the bike. I cleaned the windshield and my helmet visor, grabbed a cup of coffee and the Harley atlas, sat out on the porch and stared at the waterfall across the road. I took a few deep breaths and thanked God for another day.

I jotted some route numbers down on a yellow sticky sheet and stuck it into the see-through part of the little tank pouch.

Hwy 60 to Dahlonega

52 to Ellijay

76 to Dalton

Cut across mountain on old route

136 to LaFayette

136 – 71 Flat Rock, Alabama

71- 117

117 -72 to Memphis.

Piece of cake. As they would say in Ireland, I was on the pig’s back. What could go wrong?

The sun had burnt the mist away and the sky was now azure and cloudless. I headed north on Highway 60, a mountain forest road filled with tight turns, switchbacks, gentle rolling hills, sweepers, and twisties. Big Red slalomed through the curves gracefully. There’s an art and joy to riding in the mountains. The pleasure of matching your speed and gear to the curve, smooth clutching, downshifting, picking your line, leaning into the curve, trusting that you’ll come out safely on the other side, and when you do then accelerating and upshifting. When you do it right you feel at one with the bike and with the countryside you’re riding through.

I rode through the Chattahoochee National Forest, into Ellijay, across Fort Mountain, into Dalton and over into Alabama. After initially riding in the lush mountainside I now descended into rural areas with closed and decaying stores and passed old clapboard houses and shotgun cottages. Cars for sale were parked out by driveways and the frayed shopping centers were filled with gun shops, hairdressers, and title pawns. A scent of sadness and desperation hung in the air like a mist the sun couldn’t burn through.

But beauty was also always there if you looked for it. I passed blooming magnolias with their creamy blossoms, gnarled live oaks with Resurrection Ferns and Spanish moss. There were tall sugar pines and mimosas with their silky pink blossoms. Purple wildflowers, daisies, and Mexican primroses graced some of the roads. You just had to be willing to see the beautiful and then look. What was that old saying? Some things need to be believed to be seen. A wave of thankfulness swept over me as I rode.

As the afternoon wore on, clouds, some bruised, some gunmetal gray, started filling the sky. Hula girl was still dancing happily but the fuel warning light had come on for the third time that day. Time for another gas station stop. I was about two miles out of town when the rain began bucketing down and sideways at me. The temperature dropped dramatically and a chill shivered through me. I lowered my visor and kept riding. I was half soaked by the time I spotted a station, pulled in and parked under the canopy.

I felt tired and a bit sullen. I took some clothes out of my bag and went in and changed. I looked in the mirror. My hair was stringy and almost down to my shoulders, wet from sweat and rain. I had about a three days growth on my beard. My buddy Joe used to say to me: When you were born you were so ugly your momma had to tie a pork chop around your neck to get the dogs to play with you. I laughed. If I saw myself on the street I’d be tempted to give myself a wide berth. I managed a smile and gave myself a talking to. Loving kindness Monk. Towards yourself first, then others. No matter how you look, no matter what you feel, that’s what you show.

I went inside to the restaurant and ordered some hot coffee to help me thaw and dry out. There was a couple in the booth across the aisle from me. The man reached across the table to hold the woman’s hands but she pulled them back quickly, holding her palms toward him like a warning, and for some reason, I thought of a hurricane. The body language wasn’t looking good.

“But honey,” he said in a pleading, country western tone, “When you gets to be our age you’re gonna have some baggage.”

“Cletus, everybody does have some baggage. I’ve been putting up with yours for a long time now. But you ain’t just carrying baggage, you’re carrying garbage. Crap that should have been thrown out years ago.”

He sat upright. “Aw honey, that’s cold.” He cocked his head and put on his best sad face.

She stood up and shook her head. “Goodbye Cletus.” She said and then walked away.

His head bent down over his scrambled eggs, he mumbled a private threnody of loss and put his hands in his hair like he was going to pull it out.

“Freaking right it is. Breaking up hurts more when you’re older.” He glanced away. “You’d think that it’d get easier but it don’t.”

“Never gets easier.” Memories of loss and grief were careening all over my insides. The great goblin of grief. It’s the country we all discover from whose visit no traveler ever wants to return. But no matter how far you paddle away every new wave of grief throws you back onto that forlorn shore. “I remember…”

His phone rang and he picked it up, putting up a finger to signal me to wait. “Uh huh. Yep, I can do that. Happy to. Bye.”

He grabbed his coat, slid out of the booth and stood up. A grin broke out over his face. “She needs me to drive her home.” I watched as he hurried out.

It was dusk by the time I reached Memphis. The bumps and potholes of Highway 72 had bounced me around a fair bit and I’d hit a ton of traffic lights heading into the city so I was beat. I drove all the way up to the Mississippi River and parked the bike at Tom Lee Park. As soon as I climbed off I realized how tired I was. I had been in the transcendental state of riding and hadn’t noticed. I took some deep breaths and stretches and walked over to look at the river. My phone rang.

“Hey Joe.”

“How’s the ride Monk?”

“Great. Just made it to the Mississippi River a few minutes ago. I’m looking at it. It’s beautiful. How’s Bobbie Lee?” She was his Chinese wife and she taught physics at South East Georgia University. What was the name of that town in China she was from?

“She’s doing great. She’s still working on that Stressinger Apostrophe thing. That idea that our universe is just an apostrophe to the real world.”

“Bless her heart.”

“Hey, how’s uh, that memory thing going?”

“What memory thing?”

“Ha ha! Good joke.”

I really had forgotten what he was talking about but when I realized it I played along. “You set me up for it.”

“I did that.”

“So it’s all right?”

“Yep. Didn’t get lost once today. Sort of disappointing.”

“There’s always tomorrow.” He chuckled. “Look brother, what the hell kind of trouble did you get into in South Carolina and why did you give the troopers my number?”

“You’re still my attorney aren’t you?”

“Hell, you know I am.”

“I’m on my trip. You can handle it.”

“I could if it were straightforward but something’s happened over there you might not know about. You did a video interview right?”

“Yeah, so what’s the problem?”

“Problem is that they lost the DVD.”

“They could just cut another.”

“They could if the hard drive hadn’t somehow been erased.”

“Oh hell.”

“Yeah. The police are okay with it because they have so many eyewitness accounts from troopers that were there and they’re all singing the same tune.”

“Naturally.”

“But their Internal Affairs guys want to talk with you.”

“Well, they can’t. I’m retired and on holiday.”

“So you gave them my number thinking they might try and contact you?”

“Yep.”

“Well, can I give the IA folks your number so they can talk with you? Might clear this thing right up. It was a righteous shooting wasn’t it?”

“I don’t like those words ‘righteous shooting’. Makes it sound like killing a person, even if it was justified, is somehow a moral thing to do when it’s always immoral, maybe necessary at times, but always immoral.”

“You know what I mean! I mean that it was a good shooting.”

“Hold on for a second Joe.” I took a deep breath and thought about things. How much should I tell him? If he knew I had a copy of the interview DVD it could put him in danger. Only Smitty and I know I have a copy and I’m damn sure he’s not going to say anything about it. Joe doesn’t need to know about the DVD but he does need to know what happened. They’ll think he does regardless of whether I tell him or not. I lifted up the phone.

“Joe, one of the cops killed a disarmed man in the act of surrendering. It was cold-blooded murder.”

“Aw damn.” A silence ensued.

“You still there Joe?”

“I’m still here. I’m just thinking. You saw this?”

“Yeah.”

“And testified to it on the recording?”

“Yep.”

“On the tape, did you identify the shooter?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“But you think you know who it was?”

“I didn’t say that. Let’s just leave it at the fact that I didn’t identify anyone on the tape as having pulled the trigger.”

“So that’s why the police don’t care about talking with you but Internal Affairs does.”

“That’s how I see it.”

“Aw hell, Monk. We’re gonna have to just see how this plays out. I won’t give the IA folks or anyone your cell number but you know they could get a subpoena for you to testify.”

“Let them try and serve it. Hell, I don’t even know where I am, least of all where I’m going.”

We said goodbye and I leaned against Big Red and felt a zephyr of coolness blowing off the river. I felt relaxed and happy. I looked up at the sky, the indeterminable stars in our galaxy and wondered: Do we have a soul? If so, where does it come from and where does it go? I’ve always felt I had a soul, some connection with God; a conduit between the eternal and the finite, which contained all the holy lost and found parts of ourselves.

Scanning the sky for a sign of a motel I noticed the Econolodge, the Super 8 and the Hudson. Which one? The guidelines for the road I came up with said that when I couldn’t decide on things I was to pick the choice which came alphabetically earlier.

I pulled into the parking area for the Econolodge and got a room. I parked Big Red and then carried my gear across the long parking lot and to the elevator. I was sweating up a storm under the weight of all my stuff. The elevator door opened and a woman started to walk out, saw me, checked the floor number and stepped back inside.

“Hello, ma’am,” I said. “It’s hot out there.”

“Don’t you have air conditioning?”

“Pardon me?”

“Air conditioning. On your bike.”

I smiled and stared at her thinking she was going to laugh but she didn’t. “No ma’am, I guess I never got around to that.”

“You should check it out.” The elevator stopped and she walked out.

I dumped my stuff in the room, took a shower, got a little map of the downtown area and walked the few blocks into the city center. I got lost a few times, normal enough, but finally made my way to Charley Vergos Rendezvous restaurant for ribs and brisket. Damn, they were good! Then I walked down to Beale Street to listen to the music and check out the bikes since it was biker night. Saw some magnificent old Indians, Harleys, and BMW’s. Then I went back to the motel and fell asleep.

A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.Lao Tzu

I’ve never really taken a trip like this before where I didn’t know exactly where I was going. I tell a lie, as they say in Ireland. I did do it once before, it was the first time I quit the police force. Back then, after the death of the social worker, nothing I tried would help me feel better; not counseling, not medication, not confession. I decided to leave Savannah and leave my destination up to fate. I packed my bag, went to the airport, up to the Delta desk and asked for a plane ticket to their furthest destination. I ended up in Ireland, where I met my first wife, who later died, and my second wife.

Since then though on my travels, I’ve always liked to plan ahead, book a room somewhere, make a beeline for it and hightail it there. The problem with that method is that you don’t leave much room for chance, fate. Getting to the destination starts to take priority and influence all your decisions. You go past things that maybe you should have stopped for. Much of life is just going past things because we didn’t think they had any value, we weren’t looking anyway. But how can God, Fate, or the Universe reach us if we always try to control things? Sometimes the only way to find out where you need to go is to let yourself get lost. And trust that things will work out. That’s what I’m going to do: not plan things; get lost; trust the road and enjoy the ride.

This trip is going to be different.

A few nights before I left I was sitting on the screened porch at my house on Tybee beach. The breeze was crackling the palm fronds. I was drinking a Mexican beer, smoking my pipe and trying and failing to make those grey-blue smoke rings. I jotted down ideas to help me on the road. Here’s the list I came up with:

Reminders for the road

Look upon everything with reverence.

Check the bike each morning and see if everything’s tight and nothing’s leaking.

Check the same on myself.

Call or text the kids every evening to let them know where I am.

Before I call, find out where I am.

Never mention any dangerous incidents to the kids.

Stay in the present.

The only past I want to look at is the one in my rear view mirror.

Don’t plan ahead.

Trust that the people I meet have something to give me or I have something to give them.

When I don’t know which way to go, go left and then right the next time and then left…

Remember which way I went the last time.

If I have to choose between two things and I can’t, choose the one that starts with the earliest letter in the alphabet.

When it comes to sizes, if I don’t have any better reason, pick the smallest.

Give money to every street musician I see.

Trust the journey

Chapter 4

The important thing is not to think much, but to love much, and so do that which best stirs to love.

Teresa de Avila

I pass a biker and we flash the salute to each other. Ordinarily, it’s the left arm outstretched and down and the hand extended. It’s a way of saying “hello”, “ride safe” and on another level, “I honor your spirit”. Kinda like the Hindu greeting Namaste, but for bikers. Another biker passes me a few minutes later and starts patting the very top of his helmet. That means that a cop is up ahead somewhere. Sure enough, when I go around the curve there are blue lights flashing and two cars on the left side of the road. A police cruiser and an old 1970’s Delta 88 Oldsmobile with a white guy in it. The cop caught him heading towards Savannah and he’s writing out what I’d guess is one of those fast driving awards. I give a salute to the state trooper who’s busy talking to the lucky motorist. Then I hear a loud bang, a backfire, or gunshot and look in the mirror and see the trooper’s been shot. He’s down but returning fire. I slam on both brakes and the tires squeal, the rubber burns spewing grey-black smoke as I spin the bike around. I give it full throttle and the rear end swings into line and I scurry the bike up behind the police car, park it, reach in my saddlebag and pull out my Taurus and an extra clip of ammo. I run to his side. He’s been hit in the thigh. It’s a through and through.

“Have you called it in?”

He nods. The man in the car is still firing. I don’t know why he hasn’t driven away. I pull off my leather jacket, take my shirt off and wrap it around his thigh to stop the bleeding.

I wish to hell the guy would just drive off. But the way he’s heading is a one-way road to Savannah. The police would block it off and he’d be caught easily, which may be what he’s thinking. His only chance of escape is to turn around and pass us and get lost in the low country backroads.

The driver’s door is flung open. He jumps out and runs around behind it. He fires. A shot hits the outside mirror of the police cruiser smashing it and shattering the glass. The cop starts to return fire, somehow not realizing he’s in the direct path of it now. I grab the back of his flak jacket and drag him around to the back of the car. He’s waving his gun erratically and fires an errant shot which cuts across the road to the opposite side and hits a palm tree. A chunk of the husk goes flying. The trooper’s safe behind the patrol car but he’s still losing blood. I take his gun from him and he doesn’t notice. I tighten up my shirt on him but there’s so much blood everywhere that I can’t tell if I’ve stopped it.

I grab his face and stare at him. “When you called dispatch about this they rogered you, didn’t they?”

His eyes are beginning to float. “They 10-4’d you didn’t they?” He can’t seem to understand. His face alternates from an eerie pleasant smile to an expression of surprise and sudden agony. I don’t hear any sirens. I pull up his communicator and relay the message to dispatch and our location.

“10-4, we’re on the way.” The crackly response cuts through the air like verbal lightning. I want the perp to leave. I’ve seen enough killing in my life, done enough. I hate it.

I peek over the trunk and shout: “He’s down. Leave!” The driver fires back. He’s flanked me, crossed across the road and is hiding behind that same palm tree. Maybe the officer was trying to hit him with his shot. I’m thinking of my options. I can shoot out a tire or into the gas tank but that would only make the driver stuck. I want him to think he has options, but of course, by now he has none. He’s shot an officer and even if he tries to surrender to them I fear he’ll just be shot in retaliation. I just want to keep the officer and me alive, and him.

“Lay down your gun. You know they’ll kill you as sure as you’re standing there.”

“What?” He shouts.

Now I can hear the Doppler wailing of sirens coming from both directions.

“Look,” I shout. “Give your gun to me. I’ll protect you.”

I see his head spinning left and right as if imagining he really had anywhere to run. I put my gun next to the officer who’s looking more remote second by second, like a small oarless boat heading for some distant island.

I stand, put my hands up and shout “Look, no gun.” I wave my hands and start to walk toward him. “Give me your gun and you can stand behind me. I’ll be your shield when they come. It’s your only chance.” He looks like he’s thinking about it. Maybe he’s on meth, but at the very least he’s on adrenaline and testosterone. I inch closer as the police cars start to appear and begin flanking the road.

“Look, I’m going to run over to you and get your gun or it’ll be too late.”

He nods and drops the gun by his side. I run up to him, take a pencil from my pocket, stick it in the barrel of his gun and hold it high. I stand in front of him and shout: “I’ve got his gun! There’s an officer down behind the car.” I look at the man behind me and mentally, I can see he’s somewhere else. He has a smug look on his face and he’s turning his head left and right and nodding like he’s waiting for a job interview he’s confident he’ll get. The cops are out of their cars behind their flung open doors. I spot a few police issue assault AR 15’s and shotguns. I watch as one trooper while holding his hat on, scrambles over to the downed officer and checks on him. He stands and shakes his head somberly. “He’s dead.” He shouts.

I look at the man behind me. His head is turned away and moving slowly like he’s calculating sums that don’t add up, his eyes are unfocused, lost in the haunts of inwardness. A smile is trying to fight its way onto his face. He stutters, spit comes out of his mouth. “You do love me, Jesus.” He mutters. A shot rings out and I hit the ground. I turn and look at the man. He has a bullet hole in his forehead, is still nodding confidently, and then slowly crumbles to the ground.

So much for trying to get out of town, to get some peace and quiet, away from the violence that has always dogged my life. My throat was tight, my eyes wet and my mind flashed through the wretched deaths I had witnessed over the years. Those last words the man had uttered. They kept tugging at some vague memory of mine. Then it came to me, the words from a Flannery O’Connor story: he would have been a good man if there had been somebody there to shoot him every minute of his life. I let out a deep sigh and shook my head. Wouldn’t we all?

I was questioned for about two hours and the officers were not happy with my report. I testified that the man was not holding a gun, was, in fact, surrendering, when he was shot. My statement was recorded on camera before I was finally allowed to leave the station. On my way out I ran into an old friend.

“Hey Monk, is that you?”

I looked at the guy. Old like me, skinny as a rail, wearing a uniform. “Yeah, it’s me. Who are you again?”

“Monk, it’s me, Smitty. We worked out of Liberty Street station together.”

I smiled. “I do remember you, Smitty. Hot damn. It’s been a few years.”

“Sure has.” He said shaking his head in an expression of marvel.

“So you’re working here now?”

“Yep, after the shooting, I couldn’t go back out on the street. I got retrained in computers and digital recording systems. That’s all I do now.” He pointed down the hall. “That was me behind the one-way glass recording your statement.”

I glanced down the hall and looked back at him. “You were recording it?”

“Yep.”

“Don’t suppose I could ask a favor of you?”

“Are you kidding? After you pulled me out of that drug house?”

I had a flashback of walking hunched over in a dark, dilapidated building, with debris all over the floor. There was the stench of ammonia and cat urine, a smell like a burnt shower curtain – all signs of a place where people were making and using meth. I saw sudden flashes of orange/white light and heard the sharp, deafening, cracking booms of a 38. Then there was a low voice saying “Monk, I’m dying.” I remember squatting, feeling scared to death, crying and then somehow managing to get over to Smitty, lifting him and throwing him over my shoulder. His blood was running all over me. I scrambled through the building with him and then felt the sharp sting of a slug being sucked into my right leg. I fell through the front door to the outside, dropped Smitty and hit the ground face first in the dirt.

I nodded to Smitty. “I remember.” I could feel the tears damming up, ready to fall.

His face was red and his eyes were moist. He looked away briefly and gained some composure and a smile from somewhere. “What do you need?”

“I want a copy of my recorded interview?”

His eyes scanned left and right and he let out a slow deep breath. “I can do that.” He nodded.

“May take an hour or so. Have to find that right time to do it when no one’s around the machines.”

I put my hand on his shoulder. “Thanks, Smitty. I’m in no hurry. I’ll be out front by my bike.” I started walking down the hall and passed officers who smiled and nodded as they went by. Then I saw one in the distance heading my way who was averting his eyes. He looked like one of the officers from the scene of the shooting who had been pointing an AR 15 at us.

As he approached, before I could stop myself I said to him: “Nice shot.”

Without thinking he smiled and replied, “Thanks.” Then I saw the blood drain from the face of Officer Falcone.

I smiled and walked out.

Two hours later Smitty appeared carrying a small shopping bag.

He scanned the place and didn’t see anyone watching. “Here”. He handed me the bag. I peeked inside and saw a DVD in a sealed case. It had an official evidence tag with a label on it, with my name, the date, and Smitty’s signature.

“Keep it closed.” He added. “Only open the case if you need to and make sure your attorney’s there when you do.”

I nodded. “Thanks, buddy.”

“God bless you, Monk. Be safe.”

“You too Smitty.”

I hopped back on the Road King, put my kickstand up and headed out. I tried to recover that peaceful Zen feeling that usually comes to me almost automatically as soon as I start to ride, but my heart wasn’t in it. Maeve, my first wife, always told me I was good under stress. Now, I felt sick to my stomach. I pulled over to the side of the road, threw up, put my head down on the motorcycle and started crying.

Being both a rider and a writer I spend a lot of time in coffee shops and fast food places. Yeah, I’m the guy that’s a little sweaty, wearing bulky, black riding gear who’s hunched over a tall glass of iced tea, or maybe warming his hands by wrapping them around a steaming mug of coffee. I may look a little dazed depending on how far I’ve just ridden, how hot or cold it is outside or whether I’ve just ridden through a feverish downpour. (Feverish downpour? Yeah, I guess that works.) But despite the look of wind-blown wild abandon on my face, regardless of whether I’m riding or writing, let me assure you that I’m listening and watching closely. Part of it is that I seriously buy into all of this Be Here Now and Mindfulness stuff. Another part of it is, as a writer, I’m listening and looking for unusual expressions and conversations. The last part is that I’m just flat out nosy (or nosey for some of you).
In this hectic world that relishes speed and quickness – how fast can you get there? – acts of kindness can just whizz right past us. We don’t see them. Hurrying and being preoccupied with getting somewhere else we devalue or become unaware of where we are now, of what’s happening around us. We don’t notice others’ acts of kindness, don’t feel them when they’re done to us and we miss grabbing chances to perform acts of them. We’re too busy trying to eat as quickly as possible, read and send text messages and check our Facebook page. Now I’ll hold my hand up right this minute cause I’m guilty of this too at times. I have to keep reminding myself that kindness comes only at one speed: slow. If you’re moving too fast you’ll miss it.
Let me give you a couple of examples. On my ride back from Myrtle Beach I stopped at a Hardees (if you’ve read my blog you’ll know this is my favorite breakfast place!) in South Carolina. There was a line at the counter and the woman at the register was slightly flustered trying to hurry the orders out to the customers. She didn’t say much to me. But when the line cleared I watched as she greeted a stooped grey haired woman who must have been one of her regulars. She welcomed her warmly and carried her tray to her table. But then she also inquired about her health (which I can assure you from what I saw and overheard wasn’t all that great.) A few minutes later she came back to ask the woman if she had been taking her medicine. The woman nodded but added that her brother was in the hospital. The worker said she was surprised because she had just seen him last week and that he looked all right. Later the same worker is talking to a guy with his trousers pulled half down. They have a playful banter going so I’m sure she knows him. She says to him that he needs to dress better. He replies that he just got up and that he ain’t trying to impress anyone. She says: You might be meeting your future wife in here. He says he don’t care. She replies: You need to work on your attitude if you’re going to make it. Later, back on the bike and down the road I got a hankering for a doughnut and some coffee and I pulled into my second favorite doughnut place and got them. It took the staff quite a while to come to the desk and I was beginning to feel impatient. Then a worker showed up, apologized and told me they had a water leak they were dealing with. I got my order and sat down. Next, an older man whose leg was deformed, came in steadying himself with a cane and dragging his leg behind him as he walked. He was laughing and joking around with people. Again, they brought him his order and took it away for him when he was finished.
I thought about the old man later and how tough his life must be, having to get around like that all the time. I’m not sure I could do it. I remember one time when my riding buddy Jeff and I were having breakfast somewhere in Arkansas and I spotted a man moving snail-like with his walker. I told Jeff that if I ever got this way I wanted him to just take me out back and shoot me. Jeff, being the great friend that he is replied: “If you get like that I’m going to trip you.”
Great to have good friends you can count on!
But I guess the point is that if you are hurrying too much, you don’t see what’s going on around you. And because you don’t see it you think nothing’s happening, that the place is, in a way, a non-place, with little value. One of the reasons I like Hardees so much, and I’ve written about this, is that for some reason older retirees feel comfortable gathering there, usually at breakfast time. It’s usually a group of people, some married, some divorced or widowed that seem to enjoy the almost daily gathering. It’s a slowed down place where they get to share news, maybe some vegetables they’ve grown, make jokes, tease each other and help sooth a bit of that almost unbearable loneliness that can happen to older people who have no families, or whose children live so far away. In the place I sometimes stop at on the way to work, I sit on the edge of their formally-unreserved/informally-reserved zone and have my breakfast. I smile and nod to anyone’s eyes I can catch. Folks wander over and talk to me about my bike, or share stories about the motorcycles they once owned. Believe me, like the TV maid Hazel used to say: “I’ve heard some real doozies”. I feel enriched by it all, grateful.
But I’ll confess, I don’t always slow down. On this last day of the ride I was tired and ready to be home, plus I knew if I could stick to the interstates I could make it home that evening before dark, possibly even in time for The Briar’s Club meeting, the weekly gathering of pipe smokers that meet at my “local” (as they would say in Ireland).
I rode over 430 miles that day but made it there, just in time to stop, slow down and visit with the friends I’ve so recently been blessed with. The ones that sit in their formally-unreserved/informally-reserved pulled together round tables, where they shake hands or give hugs, share news, make jokes, tease each other, but always, each in their own quirky ways, showing kindness to one another.
It can make the roads we’re all riding on less lonely, more loving. But you’ve got to go slow. If you’re in a hurry you’ll miss it. Real kindness only happens when you slow down.

I’m back safely in Rome, Georgia again. I did over 1100 miles on the bike and paid my usual financial offerings to the altars at the Harley dealers. But back to where I left off in the previous entry. Well first of all, I did get down to the Hog’s Breath Saloon in Destin the other night as I had hoped. The beer, a local lager, was delicious, the music great and I watched some very “happy” women dancing. As we say in the south: It was a hoot! The next day I drove 2 hours nursing poor, leaking, Big Red to Dothan to the Harley dealer because they had the part that I needed to fix the bike. I had arranged again to meet my friend Kelly there. One of the seductions with “Trusting your Journey” is thinking that your journey is always about you. Don’t flatter yourself! Sometimes your journey is intended for others. In this case because my friend was meeting me at the Harley dealer she ended up running into an old friend she hadn’t seen in quite a while and it enabled them to have a bit of “closure” in their relationship. So maybe that’s what this was all about? Or it could be about me getting to see my friend again and having more oysters, this time at Dothan’s Hunt’s Oyster Bar.
Divine providence works in mysterious ways. Frankly, I don’t have a clue. All I’ve been able to figure out with this life is that you try and do your best, treat everyone you meet, without exception, with respect and lovingkindness and just trust that things will work out for the best. As I mentioned in the previous blog, you have to “surrender your mind and ego to the realm of “unknowingness”. I hate that. Sometimes you get motorcycle breakdowns, sometimes you help other friends to reunite and sometimes, if you’re lucky, you get oysters.

Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

In Tao of the Ride, Garri Garripoli writes: The Ride is the metaphor I use in this book for how we move through our life…For me, the Ride is best played out on a motorcycle. It speaks to every aspect of how I see life in that poetic way – the need for balance, confronting your mortality, accelerating, breaking, refueling, tune-ups, repairs, accidents, accepting passengers and so forth. The bike becomes a mirror that reflects the whole of my life.

I like Garripoli’s quote (and his book). Here are some of my conclusions about my ride.

Look where you want to go. When you’re are on a motorcycle you need to be focusing not immediately in front of you, but instead looking in the direction you want the bike to go. The bike will go where you’re looking. If you get fixated on some hazard in the road, or that your bike is heading off the road and you are worried about a wall or a ditch and you stare at them, that’s called object fixation. Staring at them you’re more likely to hit them. As in life, you have to not get too hung up on difficulties in your path, but instead, have a vision of where you want to go. Proverbs says: “Where there is no vision the people perish.” Lots of times in life we get stuck focusing on the problem that is making us unhappy and forget about the things that do make us happy. Let’s head toward them.

Don’t worry about what you’ve already driven through, or become preoccupied with what’s coming up that you can’t yet see. This is part of staying in the present. Having an awareness and mindfulness of what’s happening around you, what your senses are telling you. If we focus too much on the past, which we can’t change, we’re daydreaming and not paying attention. Similarly, if we worry about the future too much we can miss important things that are happening in this moment. And this moment, this day, is the only one we have. We have to present to win. This links in with the Zen concept of mushin no shin which means “the mind without mind”. Jeff said a similar thing to me when he mentioned that when he was riding it was like he had no mind. Mushin happens when the mind is not preoccupied with thoughts or emotions and thus is open to the present, to what is happening now. It’s similar to the flow that artists experience in very creative moments. You don’t rely on your thinking but on your training and intuition.

Stay calm and breathe. It’s so important not to over-anticipate and overreact to things. I’m still working on this as I tend to tense up a lot, with a rough road or wild winds. If I see a bump ahead, or debris in the road I would often tense up in anticipation. Instead, I need to look and see what my options are. This illustrates the constant lane awareness you have to have. If I can shift in my lane or change lanes to miss the obstacle then I need to stay calm, look where I want to go and make the subtle movements to go there. The last two days of my ride I felt this happening more with me. I wasn’t always trying to plan my lane position for curves, I would catch myself tensing up and I’d relax. Toward the end of the ride I was feeling more and more the flow and energy of the bike and the Ride.

The Taoists have a useful concept called wu wei. Essentially it translates as effortless action. It means to flow with the situation rather than trying to force things. Resistance is futile! Find the energy and go with it. This works effectively with difficult Harley Davidson service managers or challenging folks at work. And the principle can be seen in the actions of dancers, artists, musicians who have relaxed into their artistry, trust it and follow it. You can also see this with motorcyclists in how they manage a curve in the road. They might manhandle the bike, bank it with force, grip the handlebars extremely tightly (like I have so often done) or they relax into the curve, sense the bike and the road, look where they want to go, feel the flow and balance, and manage it all gracefully with wu wei, effortless effort.

This leads into the next bit of knowledge I gleaned: Lean into the Curve. I’ve written about this already. I even bought a Harley shirt in Victorville, California, where I was getting my Harley repaired, and the shirt says: “When Life Throws you a Curve, Lean into it.” Don’t fight it, or become fixated on it, or try to overpower it; just trust that you can go into it, through it and survive. You will make it through it and come out safely the other side.

Silence is healing and holy. We are bombarded with noise all the time. The radio, the television, music we listen to. When do we actively engage with silence? Elijah, Jesus and Mohammed journeyed into the desert so they could more clearly hear the voice of God. Buddhist, Christians and others meditate in silence. Quakers worship in silence. Psalm 46 says: Be still and know that I am God. When are we ever “still”?

Even with the loud hum of the V-Twin Harley engine on my Road King, most of the time I felt as if I was in silence. The sound was a hymn that was being written as I rode.

Love the Ride. Be grateful. This was my ride but we’re all on the Ride, our life’s journey.

The eighteenth-century Christian writer Jean-Pierre De Caussade wrote “The present moment holds infinite riches beyond your wildest dreams …The will of God is manifest in each moment, an immense ocean which only the heart fathoms insofar as it overflows with faith, trust and love.”

I know my life works better when I express gratitude for what I have and show loving kindness and compassion towards others, beginning with myself. I tried to do this as much as possible on the the ride.

I hope you enjoyed riding along. Thanks for reading and following us.

I’ll conclude with a quote from one of my favorite writers.

“Homecoming is the goal, but our home is not out there, a geographic place, the protective other, or a comforting theology or psychology. Homecoming means returning to a relationship with the Self, a relationship that was there in the beginning, but from which we necessarily strayed in our obligatory adaptations to the explicit and implicit demands of family, tribe and culture. Homecoming means healing, means integration of the split off parts of the soul, means redeeming the dignity and high purpose of our soul’s journey. When we are here to live our soul’s journey, we can spontaneously be generous to others, for we have much to give from our inner abundance; we can draw and maintain boundaries, for we have learned the difference between their journey and ours; and we can sort through different value clashes because we have found a personal authority that helps us discern what is authentic for us. In short, we have recovered a relationship to the soul (psyche) from which we lost contact, but that nonetheless continues to hum beneath the surface of our lives and never, ever loses contact with us.”